


What Happens After

by October_Moon



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, Family, Family Feels, Found Family, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 15:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18741571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/October_Moon/pseuds/October_Moon
Summary: Keith's 25, or somewhere around there. The war is over. The universe is healing and so is the team.The problem is... what happens after?WARNINGS: This fic contains references to ptsd, panic attacks, and flashbacks but it's never graphic. They're only mentioned as things that happen to the characters and aren't explored.





	What Happens After

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't stop thinking about the junk ending of Season 8. Really, show writers? You really think a bunch of people would spend years in a war together, sharing a home together, freakin mind-melding to an extent every time they form Voltron, and then just split up after and only see each other for dinner every few months? Maybe I'm clingy but I really don't think I'd be okay with my Space Family splitting up.
> 
> So basically I couldn't stop thinking about it, sat up at 11:30 one night, and just wrote this whole thing. All at once. Realized at almost 2 in the morning that I had to get up for work in about 5 hours but honestly? I don't hate what I wrote so I don't regret it.
> 
> Here ya go! If you like it then I would not turn down some comments! I get so excited every time, you don't even know...

Keith’s 25 when the war ends. He thinks, anyways. It’s been hard to keep track of it, honestly, since they’d been in the castle somewhere close to two months before they’d all realized on the same day that they might need to start a calendar.

 

He remembers Lance’s panic that day. His voice too high pitched as he rambled about his family, whose birthdays and which holidays he might’ve missed. Keith couldn’t relate but he felt the pang anyways. They fought each other a lot, sure, but they were teammates and his teammate was in pain. It hurt to see him hurting in a distant, roundabout kind of way.

 

Even after they’d started the calendar they all knew it wasn’t the most accurate. It was… actually pretty embarrassing. None of them knew how many days were in each of the months and there was a fight over how many days were in an earth year, 364 or 365. They picked 365 by flipping a coin and some of the months were easy. For example, they all knew October had 31 days just because of Halloween.

 

They chose a random date to start it at about two months after the day they were pretty sure they left on. Even that was in question.

 

They kept track of each day with Altean clocks, too, because by then everything they’d brought with them from earth that told time had broken and they couldn’t agree on how long a second lasted either. They knew ticks were a little longer but not by how much.

 

And then, after the war, Earth was… well. Earth’s clocks weren’t considered exactly accurate either. War had reached it with its rough and crushing fingers and society hadn’t done too well in the wreckage.

 

So yeah. Keith was estimated at 25. Lance and Hunk were 24. Pidge was 22. Shiro was 31.

 

The Altean were… not very concerned. They aged way slower, lasted way longer, and Lance had flung himself at Allura to stop her own age from escaping her lips after Coran had announced he was somewhere around 860 Earth years old. He’d insisted that any lady above 30 should keep her age a mystery and Allura, now convinced it was an important Earth custom, never spilled.

 

Keith and Hunk had a theory that she must’ve been around 150 but that was just between them.

 

But the problem with their ages wasn’t specifically in their ages. None of them cared so much how old they were. How could you when you were finally home? When people could finally stop dying over such a petty cause as conquering?

 

No. The problem was in what their ages meant for them. In their time spent in space, in war. In what happened after.

 

Keith was 18 when he left earth. He was 25 when he came back, maybe a year older even. He- and the other Paladins- had spent at least 7 years of their lives fighting a war together. Fighting a war more than half of them were legally too young to enter.

 

A quarter of most of their lives spent on edge. Fighting. Planning. Training. Together on an alien castle with each other and no one else.

 

The problem was that, by the time they got back, none of them knew how to stop.

 

Lance forgot his favorite food somewhere in that war. Keith remembers with burning clarity the face he’d made when his abuela, startlingly still alive thanks to the Garrisons bunkers built for their soldiers families, presented him with some Cuban dish that Keith can’t even try to pronounce. (Stupid tongue unable to roll sounds.) Lance had cut it up and taken a polite sized bite, a learned habit from all those diplomatic visits to planets they’d hoped to ally with. He’d gone rigid and Keith, because he’d learned to expect it, was afraid he’d been poisoned. But then tears rolled down his face. And he’d smiled and hugged his abuela. And apparently that Cuban dish had been like heaven to Lance as a kid. And he’d forgotten.

 

There were other things like that, a lot of them between Lance and Hunk, but Pidge had it the worst. She’d been so young,  _ so fucking young,  _ only 15 when they’d left. An entire third of her life had been spent in the war and she’d forgotten so much.

 

Like, her mother's face. The night they got back Keith knew she stayed up all night long in her parent’s bed just staring. Memorizing. She’d taken up all the memory she’d installed herself on her Altean tablet with pictures of her mother by the end of the week. 

 

There was also the fact that she used to like dresses. She’d forgotten all of them, had opened her armoire in the wreckage of her home and found eight different filthy dresses, one torn through and turned into a nest for a mouse in the bottom drawer. She’d asked her father about them and cried when he’d said they were hers. She was about 4 sizes too big for them now and they made her feel too exposed and too “loosey-goosey” to run.

 

Keith didn’t even know what he’d forgotten. He had no family aside from the Paladins. Even if he had when he left Earth he doubted he would’ve still had them when he got back. Once he was booted from the Garrison there was no way their bunkers would’ve taken in any family he had lying around. Shiro was as close as a brother but he’d been in space with Keith and his memory was absolutely awful with everything the Galra has done to him before even starting in Voltron.

 

The day the problem had been brought up was a day that stuck out in Keith’s memory, probably everyone’s. He doubted he’d ever forget it.

 

The castle was settled on a hill overlooking what used to be Seattle. Lance had picked it for the ocean and abundance of rain and the Space Needle which he thought was hilarious now. Still standing, unlike the rest of the city, the building that looked most like a human sci-fi movie spaceship. (They would’ve picked Cuba but. Well. You can’t land a castle on an island that no longer exists.)

 

The team was gathered in the lounge, Hunk getting dressed to climb into Yellow and go visit his moms. They’d survived because they’d been on vacation in a small tourist trap town in Canada and they’d set up a nice home there in a house whose occupants had been vacationing in Paris when war struck and had never returned.

 

He could remember asking, almost in slow motion as the idea struck him across the face, if Hunk was ever going to move there permanently to be with his family.

 

Pidge had snapped the pencil in her hand. She’d taken to drawing on paper while she was in space since she could post the drawings on her bedroom wall, and finding that depot of art supplies had sent her through the moon. But 7+ years in a space war tended to make you physically strong and mentally trigger-happy. She always had a box of extra pencils by her side and she pulled one out silently, watching for Hunks answer from the corner of her eye. Pretending she didn’t care but clearly on edge.

 

Lance had dropped his tablet on his face. Keith had watched patiently while he waded through a flashback, the signs clear on his face to anyone who knew him as well as the team did. It had looked like a nasty one so Keith had rested his hand on his shoulder as a reminder that he wasn’t really there, as an anchor to pull himself back to the present.

 

Shiro had simply looked up. There was no surprise there, like he’d thought of that before, of the team eventually splitting up, moving on. There was, however, worry in the slight slant of his eyebrows. He might’ve thought of it before but he was just as tense at the idea as Keith was.

 

Allura and Coran weren’t there, probably off at another meeting, but Keith wondered if they would’ve been disturbed at the thought as well. If Allura’s mouth would’ve straightened into an unhappy line, if Coran would’ve watched with a carefully controlled expression and sadness in his eyes.

 

And Hunk had stared, eyes flicking between each of them, one hand clenching and unclenching in the fabric of his shirt, his other hand held perfectly still. “I don’t- I, I mean I- I can’t…” He drew in a breath, squared his shoulders, squashed down his anxiety attack like a good soldier. “No. I never sleep well when you guys aren’t close by.”

 

And that had been it.

 

Keith had spent a few minutes after Hunk left that day wondering if anyone else would ever leave the castle to find a new home but, looking around, he’d realized he didn’t even need to ask. He knew the answer.

 

The team wasn’t needed so much anymore. They went out sometimes, did fly over shows, gave the people of the known universe a symbol to unite over. Talked to important people at diplomatic dinners every few months. Filmed universal tv specials every so often. But they weren’t vital anymore. At least, not to the universe.

 

To each other? They’d become the most important people in each other’s lives. Who else could understand better than them what each one was going through? Only they knew what missions they’d been on, had estimates of how many Galra they’d killed, how many  _ living beings  _ they’d killed. They’d been in each other’s heads as Voltron. They’d been in each other’s lives as Voltron.

 

Being away from each other for longer than a few days visit was… impossible. Or, not impossible, but more painful than it was worth.

 

No one would leave.

 

Maybe, some day, Hunk would call a meeting and ask if Shay could move in with them. Maybe Shiro would heal enough to let another man into his life, maybe a certain handsome Garrison officer named Curtis. Maybe Allura would meet a nice Altean at the colony or notice one she already knew in a different light, Coran too although none of them thought he would be going down that path ever again, not really.

 

Maybe Keith would finally give in to Lance’s request to adopt a kid. He did kinda want one and Shiro had been reassuring him that his lack of a mother figure would not make him a bad parent.

 

The problem of Keith’s age was less the numbers and more the time and the way that time had melted them into one being incapable of separating as they should.

 

But maybe… maybe it didn’t have to be such a big problem after all.

 

Maybe one day the castle would be as full of people as Coran’s pop-pop had built it to be because of them. Maybe 7 years of war could still give them something good.

**Author's Note:**

> The problem was never much of a problem. What happens after? Family. Family happens after.
> 
> Hope you liked it! I'm working on other fics right now- actually, I'm working on many fics right now. Because I have no self control. Help. But anyways, that's why my multi chap fic isn't being updated. Other fics got in the way at first and now my writing has changed a bit and if I'm gonna continue it then I'll need to heavily edit it.
> 
> I hope to finish it at some point just because it was my first fic I tried publishing but... ugh. So much editing.
> 
> See you next time tho?


End file.
